As an extension of the Turkish interest in the Ottoman historical legacy in Sudan, Ankara continued extending the hands of gratitude to the family of Sultan Ali Dinar, the ally of the Ottoman Caliphate, and the last Sultans of the "Fur" who was known for resisting British colonialism for about 18 years, and interested in establishing a state based on the teachings of Islam and spreading justice and was known as the Fur Sultanate.

The Fur Sultanate ruled the present-day Darfur region in western Sudan for centuries and was an independent state. The Fur Sultanate was one of the largest ethnic groups in the Darfur region, and its name was later derived from it.

According to historians, Sultan Ali Dinar ruled the Fur Sultanate from 1898 until he was martyred in the Battle of "Brinjeh" against the British army on November 6, 1916, when colonial aircraft managed to disperse his forces and kill him, accompanied by a number of his army leaders and his companions, after Hafiz On the independence of his state after the fall of the Mahdist state for nearly 20 years.

Sultan Ali Dinar ruled the Fur Sultanate from 1898 to 1916 (communication sites)

A man of fire

A dinar in the local dialect means "this is fire", and it refers to the strong and courageous warrior in Sudanese cultures (a man of fire), while local sources confirmed that the Sultan's mother was the first to give him the title because of his intensity and ruggedness since his childhood.

Last week, the Turkish ambassador to Khartoum, Irfan Naziroglu, visited the wife of Ali Dinar, the wife of Ali Dinar, and the remarkable visit received good echoes among the extended family and was widely welcomed.

Al-Miram Haram is the youngest daughter of Sultan Ali Dinar, and she is the only daughter who is still alive, as she lives with her granddaughter in the Al-Jarif suburb east of the capital Khartoum.

Al-Miram means "princess", a title used to be given to the daughter of the sultan during the kingdoms of Darfur, while the Kandaka is the "great queen" and the two titles were reintroduced to the Sudanese activists in the December 2018 revolution that toppled the regime of Omar al-Bashir.

The Turkish ambassador mediates the campus and her family in the Al-Jarif suburb, east of Khartoum (Turk Press)

Dar Zaghawa

The Turkish embassy said in a tweet on Twitter, "Mr. Irfan Naziroglu, the Turkish ambassador to Khartoum, visited Miriam (the princess), wife of the martyr Fur Sultan Ali Dinar's daughter, who was only one year old when her father was martyred in 1916."

In a press interview published several years ago, Al-Miram Haram said that she had not witnessed her father’s reign because he died a year after her birth, and that she was brought up in “Dar Zaghawa” near the Chadian town of Tina, the home of her mother, the daughter of the famous Sultan Dosa, who belongs to the Zaghawa tribe.

Al-Miram Haram spoke of the polygamy of her father's adult wives in total, 100 wives, and that this was the possession of the sultans, and the aim of that - as she said - was to expand the family area and link it with other families, and that resulted in intermarriage and intermarriage of 125 sons and daughters.

The well-known sultan has descendants throughout the Arab world in Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and many of them have emerged in Sudan as politicians and stars of society.

Turkish and Sudanese flags on the palace of Ali Dinar (Anatolia)

Great standing

Sultan Ali Dinar enjoys a great position with the Turks, as he chose to stand as an ally of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War (1914-1916) against the British colonialist, despite the fact that his state, which was resistant to occupation and was not affiliated with the Ottoman state.

Sultan Ali Dinar continued to send to the Holy Land the clothing of the Kaaba and supplies for pilgrims for 20 years, after the British disrupted the caravan that was going from Egypt to Mecca.

The Turkish Documentation House agreed to exchange historical documents of the period of Turkish rule in Sudan with the Sudanese Documentation House to benefit from them and translate them into Arabic and English, especially those related to the Sultanate of Fur.

Erdogan was keen to visit the Darfur region during his visit to Sudan when he was prime minister in 2006 (Anatolia)

Erdogan visits Darfur

And when Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he arrived in Khartoum to participate in the 28th Arab summit in 2006, and then went to the Darfur region at the height of the ongoing war there, to express his gratitude for Sultan Ali Dinar's solid stance alongside the Ottoman Islamic Caliphate and his commitment to help it against the British during the First World War. .

And history books say that, upon the outbreak of the world war between Turkey and Britain, the Sultan openly expressed his bias and inclination towards the Turks and took a hostile stance on the condominium in 1915, and announced the break between him and the British and Egyptian condominium of treaties and agreements.

He announced that he had formally joined the Turks, with whom he had close ties.

Erdogan announced that he would guarantee the renewal of Sultan Ali Dinar's palace, which is the huge palace that he supervised its construction between 1911 and 1912, on an area of ​​3 thousand square meters, an Iraqi engineer of Turkish origin.

Sultan Ali Dinar was killed in the Battle of Brinjeh against the British army on November 6, 1916 (Turk Press)

Rehabilitation of the Sultan’s Palace

Indeed, the palace was rehabilitated in the context of the cooperation protocol between North Darfur State and the Turkish government, and the process of modernizing and rehabilitating the palace was completed, coinciding with the 104th anniversary of his death.

On that day, the ambassador of Ankara in Sudan tweeted, on his Twitter account, "Today marks the 104th anniversary of the martyrdom of the hero, Sultan Ali Dinar, who supported the Ottoman Empire during the First World War."

He added, "In commemoration of the Sultan, who is considered a symbol of brotherhood between the Turkish and Sudanese peoples, and in loyalty to him, we have restored his palace in the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State. May God have mercy on him."

The Sultan had intentionally established centers for memorizing the Qur’an and Sharia courts, organized state administration and began construction of his palace in 1871 and was completed in 1912, under the supervision of Haji Abdul Raziq, known as Basha Buk, who came to El Fasher from Baghdad.